DOCSLIB.ORG

“Before Democracy: the Production and Uses of Common Sense”

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
“Before Democracy: the Production and Uses of Common Sense” Before Democracy: The Production and Uses of Common Sense Author(s): Sophia Rosenfeld Source: The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 80, No. 1 (March 2008), pp. 1-54 Published by: University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/529076 Accessed: 27-02-2016 21:25 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Modern History. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 73.234.171.93 on Sat, 27 Feb 2016 21:25:37 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Before Democracy: The Production and Uses of Common Sense Sophia Rosenfeld University of Virginia And all henceforth, who murder Common-Sense, Learn from these Scenes that tho’ Success you boast, You shall at last be haunted with her Ghost. (HENRY FIELDING1) Many of the factors that shaped modern political life remain obscure to us. Some of these factors are now imperceptible because they were private, illegal, off-limits, or socially marginal. Others were, in Alain Corbin’s elegant phrase, simply too banal ever to have been much remarked upon, even if they made whole categories of thought and experience possible.2 Corbin was famously talking about what we call sense experiences: smell- ing, touching, and the like. But what of the historical evolution and significance of our most commonplace and trite assumptions about these banal experiences—or what is best known as common sense? Common sense is, of course, hardly an unfamiliar notion these days. Talk of it permeates every aspect of contemporary Western democratic political culture. We evoke or appeal to common sense in order to signal that the practical, everyday wisdom of ordinary people in ordinary situa- tions, as opposed to the unrealistic and extremist advice of so-called experts, provides the foundation for our political ideals. We also use the notion of common sense to suggest that bitter, partisan disagreements have been or should be jettisoned in favor of nonideological and therefore consensual solutions to the issues of our times. This is a rhetorical stance with which no one is likely to disagree. Speaking in the name of common 1 Henry Fielding, Pasquin. A Dramatick Satire on the Times: Being the Rehearsal of Two Plays, viz., A Comedy call’d The Election; and a Tragedy, call’d The Life and Death of Common Sense. As it is acted at the theatre in the Hay-Market (London, 1736), act 5, 64. 2 Alain Corbin, “A History and Anthropology of the Senses,” in Time, Desire, and Horror: Towards a History of the Senses, trans. Jean Birrell (Cambridge, MA, 1995), 190. On the latent and consequently invisible dimension of history, see also Jacques Rancie`re, The Names of History: On the Poetics of Knowledge, trans. Hassan Melehy, foreword by Hayden White (Minneapolis, 1994). The Journal of Modern History 80 (March 2008): 1–54 © 2008 by The University of Chicago. 0022-2801/2008/8001-0001$10.00 All rights reserved. This content downloaded from 73.234.171.93 on Sat, 27 Feb 2016 21:25:37 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 2 Rosenfeld sense strikes most of us as a natural—indeed, commonsensical—part of democratic culture. Some leading political theorists have even suggested that common sense, in practice, plays an especially important role in democracies, providing them (alongside the individual reason that is so central to modern liberalism) with a practical and communitarian founda- tion. Writing in the wake of the Second World War, Hannah Arendt argued that healthy democracies require a dose of common sense, and not just the efforts of a collection of rational individuals making self-interested deci- sions, to thrive. Giving political salience to the Kantian idea that aesthetic judgments lay claim to validity because they are grounded in the capacity to think as part of a community, Arendt proposed that common sense was not simply the ground upon which democratic politics should be formed. The re-creation and reinforcement of common sense, through public dis- course and debate, was a critical goal of democracy and the main safeguard against what she termed the ideological thinking of totalitarianism.3 And yet, just as the very politically engaged English satirist Henry Fielding long ago prophesied in a farce he called Pasquin, common sense has turned out to be a rather spectral presence in the modern world. Despite its assumed authority, it remains impossible to witness in action, seldom defined in its particulars, and rarely analyzed in terms of its specific function or consequences for public life. Generally, only its absence is lamented. Moreover, common sense, as a set of ideas or a value, has been almost entirely neglected as a historical variable. Partly this is because the story of the advent of modernity has, in the liberal, Enlight- enment vein, been written for so long as the story of the triumph of reason over its chief opponents; common sense sounds a bit humble and, yes, even banal by comparison. Undoubtedly, this neglect also stems from the fact that common sense refers, by definition, to that which is in need of no further clarification or interpretation, to that which is self-evident to everyone. Either way, the results are apparent. Historians, who tend to be more interested in debunking common sense’s contemporary content than in reflecting on its invention and uses, have largely taken for granted the value that we have come to place on the taken-for-granted.4 3 Some of Hannah Arendt’s most important statements on common sense and democracy can be found in three of her works: The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York, 1951), “Understanding and Politics,” Partisan Review 20, no. 4 (July–August 1953): 377–92, and Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy (Chi- cago, 1982). See also Sandra K. Hinchman, “Common Sense and Political Bar- barism in the Theory of Hannah Arendt,” Polity 17, no. 2 (1984): 317–39; Anne-Marie Roviello, Sens commun et modernite´ chez Hannah Arendt (Brussels, 1987); and Michael G. Gottsegen, The Political Thought of Hannah Arendt (Al- bany, NY, 1994), 139–234. 4 On the tendency of the contemporary social sciences to be directed against This content downloaded from 73.234.171.93 on Sat, 27 Feb 2016 21:25:37 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The Production and Uses of Common Sense 3 This essay should be read as a preliminary effort to rectify that situation: to uncover the traces of common sense moving back through time and to explain how, and with what effects, this ghost has haunted modern life and, especially, the emergence of modern democracy. From where did our faith in this particular form of epistemic authority develop?5 How and why did it become so deeply intertwined with democratic political cul- ture? What have been the long-term consequences of this little-noted marriage? To answer, we must look in two directions. We need to try, in the guise of the historian of mentalities, to discern the most basic collective con- victions, associations, and organizing principles that governed the behav- iors and beliefs of people in the past across their most obvious social divisions. Some of these notions we now see as universally valid (i.e., three is greater than two); others are more situationally specific (i.e., there is a God, or the soul is eternal). The sum total of such operating rules make up what the anthropologist Clifford Geertz memorably referred to as a culture’s “common sense.”6 But uncovering these norms cannot be the only project. At the same time, in the spirit of what has come to be known as historical epistemology, we need also to attempt to determine when and how and under what broad historical conditions assumptions about the existence of certain self-evident, shared principles came to be labeled and common sense, see the introduction to Pierre Guenancia and Jean-Pierre Sylvestre, eds., Le sens commun: Theories et pratiques; Actes du colloque de Dijon (Dijon, 2004). Antoine Compagnon makes a similar argument about the aim of all literary theory as “in effect the defeat of common sense,” in Literature, Theory, and Common Sense, trans. Carol Cosman (Princeton, NJ, 2004), esp. 193. 5 I borrow the term “epistemic authority” from Don Herzog, Poisoning the Minds of the Lower Orders (Princeton, NJ, 1998), whose work explores the tensions in a later period of English history over the question of “what epistemic norms ought to enjoy the stamp of communal authority” (532). 6 Clifford Geertz, “Common Sense as a Cultural System,” Antioch Review 33, no. 1 (1975): 5–26, reprinted in his Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Inter- pretive Anthropology (New York, 1983), 73–93. Historians of mentalities, while usually learning heavily on cultural anthropology for explanations of their methods and goals, have generally used other terms, including historical psychology, mentalite´, collective representations, structures of belief, and the social imaginary, to refer to a culture’s basic and often unarticulated principles and values; see Peter Burke, Varieties of Cultural History (Ithaca, NY, 1997). One exception is Robert Darnton, who in The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York, 1985) notes in passing: “Politics could not take place without the preliminary mental ordering that goes into the common-sense notion of the real world.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • A Brief History of Christ Church MEDIEVAL PERIOD
    A Brief History of Christ Church MEDIEVAL PERIOD Christ Church was founded in 1546, and there had been a college here since 1525, but prior to the Dissolution of the monasteries, the site was occupied by a priory dedicated to the memory of St Frideswide, the patron saint of both university and city. St Frideswide, a noble Saxon lady, founded a nunnery for herself as head and for twelve more noble virgin ladies sometime towards the end of the seventh century. She was, however, pursued by Algar, prince of Leicester, for her hand in marriage. She refused his frequent approaches which became more and more desperate. Frideswide and her ladies, forewarned miraculously of yet another attempt by Algar, fled up river to hide. She stayed away some years, settling at Binsey, where she performed healing miracles. On returning to Oxford, Frideswide found that Algar was as persistent as ever, laying siege to the town in order to capture his bride. Frideswide called down blindness on Algar who eventually repented of his ways, and left Frideswide to her devotions. Frideswide died in about 737, and was canonised in 1480. Long before this, though, pilgrims came to her shrine in the priory church which was now populated by Augustinian canons. Nothing remains of Frideswide’s nunnery, and little - just a few stones - of the Saxon church but the cathedral and the buildings around the cloister are the oldest on the site. Her story is pictured in cartoon form by Burne-Jones in one of the windows in the cathedral. One of the gifts made to the priory was the meadow between Christ Church and the Thames and Cherwell rivers; Lady Montacute gave the land to maintain her chantry which lay in the Lady Chapel close to St Frideswide’s shrine.
    [Show full text]
  • Proquest Dissertations
    UNIVERSITY D'OTTAWA - ECOLE UES GRADUES EFFORTS IN THE FIELD OF RELIGIOUS TOLERATION IN THE EARLY POLITICAL CAREER OF EDMUND BURKE, I765-I782 by John Edmund O'Brien Thesis presented to the Faculty of Arts of the University of Ottawa through the Department of History as partial fulfill­ ment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. -sit>tee d'd'o0( ^ <^ "*YJ ^ \ s* m Ottawa v y t , L.ttKAKicS » Ottawa, Canada, 1955 UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA - SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES UMI Number: DC53435 INFORMATION TO USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleed-through, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMI UMI Microform DC53435 Copyright 2011 by ProQuest LLC All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 _ UN1VERSITE D'OTTAWA - ECOLE PES GRADUES ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This thesis was prepared under the guidance of Doctor George Buxton of the department of History of the University of Ottawa. ; ; The writer wishes to express his gratitude to the ; I j I following people or institutions that helped in the work of i ithe thesis: to Doctor Ross Hoffman and Doctor Paul Levack of i the Graduate School of Fordham University for introducing the! writer to the field of Burke studies; to Earl Fitzwilliam and; i his trustees for permission to quote from Burke letters in ! i the Wentworth Manuscripts and to J.
    [Show full text]
  • Coversheet for Thesis in Sussex Research Online
    A University of Sussex PhD thesis Available online via Sussex Research Online: http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/ This thesis is protected by copyright which belongs to the author. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Please visit Sussex Research Online for more information and further details ‘Providence and Political Economy’: Josiah Tucker’s Providential Argument for Free Trade Peter Xavier Price PhD Thesis in Intellectual History University of Sussex April 2016 2 University of Sussex Peter Xavier Price Submitted for the award of a PhD in Intellectual History ‘Providence and Political Economy’: Josiah Tucker’s Providential Argument for Free Trade Thesis Summary Josiah Tucker, who was the Anglican Dean of Gloucester from 1758 until his death in 1799, is best known as a political pamphleteer, controversialist and political economist. Regularly called upon by Britain’s leading statesmen, and most significantly the Younger Pitt, to advise them on the best course of British economic development, in a large variety of writings he speculated on the consequences of North American independence for the global economy and for international relations; upon the complicated relations between small and large states; and on the related issue of whether low wage costs in poor countries might always erode the competitive advantage of richer nations, thereby establishing perpetual cycles of rise and decline.
    [Show full text]
  • Ordination Sermons: a Bibliography1
    Ordination Sermons: A Bibliography1 Aikman, J. Logan. The Waiting Islands an Address to the Rev. George Alexander Tuner, M.B., C.M. on His Ordination as a Missionary to Samoa. Glasgow: George Gallie.. [etc.], 1868. CCC. The Waiting Islands an Address to the Rev. George Alexander Tuner, M.B., C.M. on His Ordination as a Missionary to Samoa. Glasgow: George Gallie.. [etc.], 1868. Aitken, James. The Church of the Living God Sermon and Charge at an Ordination of Ruling Elders, 22nd June 1884. Edinburgh: Robert Somerville.. [etc.], 1884. Allen, William. The Minister's Warfare and Weapons a Sermon Preached at the Installation of Rev. Seneca White at Wiscasset, April 18, 1832. Brunswick [Me.]: Press of Joseph Grif- fin, 1832. Allen, Willoughby C. The Christian Hope. London: John Murray, 1917. Ames, William, Dan Taylor, William Thompson, of Boston, and Benjamin. Worship. The Re- spective Duties of Ministers and People Briefly Explained and Enforced the Substance of Two Discourses, Delivered at Great-Yarmouth, in Norfolk, Jan. 9th, 1775, at the Ordina- tion of the Rev. Mr. Benjamin Worship, to the Pastoral Office. Leeds: Printed by Griffith Wright, 1775. Another brother. A Sermon Preach't at a Publick Ordination in a Country Congregation, on Acts XIII. 2, 3. Together with an Exhortation to the Minister and People. London: Printed for John Lawrance.., 1697. Appleton, Nathaniel, and American Imprint Collection (Library of Congress). How God Wills the Salvation of All Men, and Their Coming to the Knowledge of the Truth as the Means Thereof Illustrated in a Sermon from I Tim. II, 4 Preached in Boston, March 27, 1753 at the Ordination of the Rev.
    [Show full text]
  • Patronage, Performance, and Reputation in the Eighteenth-Century Church
    PATRONAGE, PERFORMANCE, AND REPUTATION IN THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY CHURCH DANIEL REED OXFORD BROOKES UNIVERSITY Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the award of Doctor of Philosophy in History SEPTEMBER 2019 1 Lancelot Blackburne, Archbishop of York. After unknown artist. Mezzotint, sold by Thomas Bakewell. 1724 or after. Private collection of Daniel Reed. 2 For Freya 3 Abstract The perceived success of the revisionist programme in dissipating the ‘longest shadow in modern historiography’ calls into question the ongoing relevance of ‘optimistic’ versus ‘pessimistic’ interpretations of the Church of England in the long eighteenth century. And yet, the case of Lancelot Blackburne, Archbishop of York (1724-1743), has not benefitted from the ‘revisionist turn’ and represents an unparalleled problem in accounts of the Georgian episcopate. Whilst Benjamin Hoadly has been the most maligned bishop of the period for his theology, Blackburne is the most derided for his personal imperfections and supposed negligence of his episcopal duties. These references are often pernicious and euphemistic, manifesting in several quasi-apocryphal tales. The most regularly occurring being accounts of Blackburne’s lasciviousness, speculation over the paternity of his chaplain Thomas Hayter, and the Archbishop’s association with piracy. As long as these bastions of resistance to revisionism remain, negative assumptions will linger on in contemporary studies of the Church, regardless of whether they are reframed by current trends. As such, this thesis utilises under-explored archival sources to reorient Blackburne’s case to its historical context. This is achieved through an exploration of the inter-connected themes of patronage, performance, and reputation.
    [Show full text]
  • Reading the Irish Woman: Studies in Cultural Encounter and Exchange, 1714–1960
    Reading the Irish Woman: Studies in Cultural Encounter and Exchange, 1714–1960 Meaney, Reading the Irish Woman.indd 1 15/07/2013 12:33:33 Reappraisals in Irish History Editors Enda Delaney (University of Edinburgh) Maria Luddy (University of Warwick) Reappraisals in Irish History offers new insights into Irish history, society and culture from 1750. Recognising the many methodologies that make up historical research, the series presents innovative and interdisciplinary work that is conceptual and interpretative, and expands and challenges the common understandings of the Irish past. It showcases new and exciting scholarship on subjects such as the history of gender, power, class, the body, landscape, memory and social and cultural change. It also reflects the diversity of Irish historical writing, since it includes titles that are empirically sophisticated together with conceptually driven synoptic studies. 1. Jonathan Jeffrey Wright, The ‘Natural Leaders’ and their World: Politics, Culture and Society in Belfast, c.1801–1832 Meaney, Reading the Irish Woman.indd 2 15/07/2013 12:33:33 Reading the Irish Woman Studies in Cultural Encounter and Exchange, 1714–1960 GerArdiNE MEANEY, MARY O’Dowd AND BerNAdeTTE WHelAN liVerPool UNIVersiTY Press Meaney, Reading the Irish Woman.indd 3 15/07/2013 12:33:33 reading the irish woman First published 2013 by Liverpool University Press 4 Cambridge Street Liverpool L69 7ZU Copyright © 2013 Gerardine Meaney, Mary O’Dowd and Bernadette Whelan The rights of Gerardine Meaney, Mary O’Dowd and Bernadette Whelan to be identified as the authors of this book have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
    [Show full text]
  • Durham E-Theses
    Durham E-Theses The high Church tradition in Ireland 1800-1870 with particular reference to John Jebb and Alexander Knox Thompson, Michael James How to cite: Thompson, Michael James (1992) The high Church tradition in Ireland 1800-1870 with particular reference to John Jebb and Alexander Knox, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/5713/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 2 M.J. Thompson: The High Church Tradition in Ireland, 1800-1870, with particular reference to John Jebb and Alexander Knox. (Thesis for the M.A. Degree, 1992) ABSTRACT This is a critical enquiry into the widely held belief that the doctrines of pre-Tractarian High Church Anglicanism have exercised a specially tena• cious hold on the Church of Ireland. Chapter 1 surveys the tradition as developed in the 17th and 18th centuries, but also examines the peculiarity of a Church established by law in a land the majority of whose people adhered to other Christian bodies.
    [Show full text]
  • A Brief History of Christ Church
    A Brief History of Christ Church MEDIEVAL PERIOD Christ Church was founded in 1546, and there had been a college here since 1525, but prior to the dissolution of the monasteries, the site was occupied by a priory dedicated to the memory of St Frideswide, the patron saint of both university and city. St Frideswide, a noble Saxon lady, founded a nunnery for herself as head and for twelve more noble virgin ladies sometime towards the end of the seventh century. She was, however, pursued by Algar, prince of Leicester, for her hand in marriage. She refused his frequent approaches which became more and more desperate. Frideswide and her ladies, forewarned miraculously of yet another attempt by Algar, fled up river to hide. She stayed away some years, settling at Binsey, where she performed healing miracles. On returning to Oxford, Frideswide found that Algar was as persistent as ever, laying siege to the town in order to capture his bride. Frideswide called down blindness on Algar who eventually repented of his ways, and left Frideswide to her devotions. Frideswide died in about 737, and was canonised in 1480. Long before this, though, pilgrims came to her shrine in the priory church which was now populated by Augustinian canons. Nothing remains of Frideswide’s nunnery, and little of the Saxon church - perhaps a few stones - but the cathedral and the buildings around the cloister are the oldest on the site. Her story is pictured in cartoon form by Burne-Jones in one of the windows in the cathedral. One of the gifts made to the priory was the meadow between Christ Church and the river; Lady Montacute gave the land to maintain her chantry which lay in the Lady Chapel close to St Frideswide’s shrine.
    [Show full text]
  • Downloaded from Manchesterhive.Com at 10/01/2021 11:30:13AM Via Free Access
    Republican politics after 1714 6 . Sapere aude: ‘commonwealth’ politics under George I, 1714–22 n the night of 1 March 1710, London was convulsed by rioting crowds. ODuring the course of the evening dissenting meeting-houses were attacked and destroyed, lords, earls and bishops were insulted and affronted in the streets, and many citizens were beaten, assaulted and even killed. Any who refused to join in with the chant of ‘High Church and Sacheverell’ were ‘knocked down’ by armed and increasingly violent men.1 Abigail Harley writing to Edward Harley in Oxford the day after the tumult, commented that ‘now we hear nothing but drums’.2 The cause of all this disorder was a conflict over whether Christian culture was determined by men of reason and toleration, or men of God and authority. The Whig prosecution defended the Erastian principle, ‘by which all ecclesiastical jurisdiction … is made subject to the civil power’, and reinforced its commitment to Protestant civil liberties by prose- cuting the High Church clergyman Henry Sacheverell.3 Toland was intimate with many of the leading actors in the public trial. Despite Sacheverell’s conviction, his reputation as a defender of ‘the church in danger’ set the scene for the triumph of the Tory party that was swept to power in the following General Election. Clerical politics was civil politics under another name. Toland saw the trial as a critical moment in the republican war against priestcraft. In a number of works published between 1710 and 1714 he struggled to establish the dangers of such clericalism to public virtue, addressing much of the argument to the Hanoverian court.
    [Show full text]
  • Irish Charter Schools
    The Irish Journal o f Education, 1974 viu 1 pp 3 29 IRISH CHARTER SCHOOLS Kenneth Milne* Church of Ireland Board of Education Lecky s condemnation of the Charter schools has never been seriously challenged, nor could it easily be Yet they were the work of that very improving’ spirit to which such contemporary foundations as the Dublin Society and the Linen Board owed their origin in the early (and much neglected) decades of 18th century Ireland What follows is an analysis of the concepts that gave rise to the schools in the political theological and economic climate of the day and an examination of the modus operandt of Primate Boulter s 'grand design’ which is one of the earliest institutions of modern Ireland for which we have something approaching adequate documentation Forbidding yet curiously forlorn in a number of our towns and villages stand the great hulks that once housed the Charter Schools of the eighteenth century Built to a model plan, they must surely be a unique set of educational monuments, and should archaeology join the ever lengthening list of the sciences serving the study of education, these gaunt shells of Primate Boulter’s ‘grand design’ will surely merit digging There can hardly be any comparable series of Georgian buildings in Ireland, yet the charter school houses, like the decades that saw them built, have received scant attention from the preservationists who are, perhaps, repelled by so much that is Bastille like about them Indeed the early decades of the eighteenth century can fairly be termed the forgotten
    [Show full text]
  • 'Bridget Jones' Church in the Ride and Stride
    www.oxford.anglican.org October 2016 no 284 thedoor Win a copy of Lighted God in the Life of Bishop The BFG’s hidden home - Playgrounds for Palestine UK - page seven Windows- page five Steven - page 16 page 11 ‘Bridget Jones’ church in the Ride and Stride DESPITE wind and searing rain hundreds of people turned out for the annual Ride and Stride to raise funds for historic churches in the Diocese. And one of the churches highlighted in national publicity was St Lawrence’s, West Wycombe, where the wedding scene in the new Bridget Jones’s Baby movie was filmed. St Lawrence’s is already on the tourist map as it is on West Wycombe Hill, a National Trust park, which features the stately home of the Dashwood Family. Brian Prosser, the treasurer at St Lawrence’s, had previously worked with film production companies before he retired from his work as an insurance broker. He first heard that the film company were interested in the church when he took a call from West Wycombe Park. “They told me they were interested in using the church for the wedding scene. About 20 people turned up, the full production team for Bridget Jones.” Part of the deal meant someone from the church was present every day during the filming, so Brian, his wife and his daughter-in-law watched the whole process. “They completely stripped the church, they took everything out, even the font, but they took photographs of everything and put it all back. The day after they left you would never have known they had been there,” he said.
    [Show full text]
  • Eucharistic Belief and Practice in Ireland, 1660-1740
    Eucharistic belief and practice in Ireland, 1660-1740 by EVIE MONAGHAN THESIS FOR THE DEGREE OF PHD DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND MAYNOOTH HEAD OF DEPARTMENT: Professor Marian Lyons Supervisor of Research: Professor Raymond Gillespie February 2014 For Dad Table of contents Page Acknowledgements ii Abbreviations and conventions iii List of figures iv Introduction` 1 Chapter 1: The theory of the Eucharist in the Church of Ireland, 1660-1740 17 Chapter 2: Eucharistic practice in the Church of Ireland, 1660-1740 54 Chapter 3: The theory of the Eucharist in the Presbyterian tradition, 1660-1740 105 Chapter 4: Eucharistic practices among Presbyterians, 1660-1740 136 Chapter 5: The theory of the Eucharist in the Catholic Church, 1660-1740 175 Chapter 6: Eucharistic practice in the Catholic Church, 1660-1740 214 Chapter 7: „Confessions in conflict‟- Eucharistic controversy in Ireland, 1660-1740 253 Conclusion 298 Bibliography 303 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor, Prof. Raymond Gillespie, for all of his help and encouragement during my research. I would also like to thank Prof. Vincent Comerford for providing a warm welcome to the department when I first arrived in Maynooth. My thanks also to the staff of the department and Prof. Marian Lyons. This thesis was funded by both a John and Pat Hume scholarship and a postgraduate award from the Irish Research Council, for which I am most grateful. Thanks to my MLitt class, Jenny, Marykate, Conor, Ren, Patrick, and our honorary member, Mel. A special word of gratitude to Rebecca for her ever-encouraging words and a place to stay at a crucial time.
    [Show full text]